Monday, November 13, 2006

From Darth Vader to Reagan's Brain in Schwarzenegger


Really funny stuff. Check out alt.NPR Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything, especially The MasturVader installment:

This piece was truly a collaboration, the sort I hadn't been a part of before. Ben called me and said he was doing a show called "The Dark Side" in two weeks and would I want to write something with him. He had a sketch of an idea about a Darth Vader impersonator who was pathologically obsessed with the character, even after his obsession had alienated the people who allowed him to live his dream. He wanted to write it as a mock public radio news report which is also something I'd never done before. After a couple of phone conversations just brainstorming different plot twists and details, Ben hammered out a rough, partial outline and I e-mailed him back with the first few minutes of the story. Ben e-mailed me back with changes. I changed his changes and e-mailed back more script. It went on this way for a week until I was sitting on Ben's couch reading the final script into his mini-disc recorder. (And even then we argued about the ending until we came up with some writing we both agreed on.) I recorded the "tracks" first, then me-as-interviewer asking "Darth" questions, then me-as-"Darth."
Thanks to Senta M.

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